Q19: Notes From Therapy

"Cinderella didn't need a prince! She needed a damn good lawyer. The house was hers in the first place."

Q18: The Art of Taking It Personally

Start with a basically neutral comment, question, or situation. Decide that it must be about you, and then rephrase everything into the negative. The more negative you can be, the better. Try to think of the worst possible way to interpret what happened. If you're having trouble with this, ruminate! As it reviews the event, your brain will actually CHANGE the memory to help you remember it in different, increasingly negative ways. Repeat the rumination process several times.

By this time, you should be at least disgruntled, and hopefully starting to feel the pangs of self pity. It is time to generalize these feelings to other areas of your life. It's basic multiplication - say you're feeling about -5 on the negativity scale (scale of -1 [aw, nuts] to -10 [apocalypse now]). If you can feel this way about 7 different areas of your life, you will have achieved a negativity score of -35. Do the math, and now the apocalypse is happening 3 1/2 times. This magnitude of negativity takes practice, but if you have very little faith in yourself, you should be just fine.

As the negativity spreads, you might feel the urge to do something about your situation. Under no circumstances should you talk to someone about the way that you feel. If you do fall into this trap, however, there's an easy way out. As you're talking to them, notice how they don't actually understand how you feel - how could they? Try to think about the ways that they have it easier than you do. If you can get yourself to this point, it will be easy to explode at them for even a gentle disagreement or difference in opinion.

Also to be avoided: gratitude lists, activities that you enjoy, daily responsibilities, friends, writing, and tears.

Bitterness is a paralytic, so it should be easy enough to manage the above list if you are pitying yourself to the proper extent.

By this point, you should be snipping at the people who love you (but really, does anyone love you? And if they do, they wouldn't love you if they actually knew who you were), feeling a tightness in your chest and throat, crippling at anything that reminds you that other people get to be happy, clenching your teeth, and burying yourself in your basement for an afternoon of your most dismal Pandora station.

If that doesn't do it for you, you could always toss a childish cry for help out on the internet. Typically, your friends don't take your shit, but thinking about the ways that you try to make them do just that will send you into another expertly-crafted negative spiral.

Q17: Blank

Grace is an every damn day kind of thing.

It screws with my golden plateau theory. That one day, I'll figure out God, and relationships, and meaning, and life, and happiness, and everything will look like it popped out of a catalog.

Well, not one of the tacky ones.

But still.

Catalog.

I get to choose between realities. I do.

I can choose grace and God and the whole "my identity IS God" thing.

I can choose bitterness and competition and "I am what I do, and so is everybody else (except I don't actually know what they do so they are what I think they do). And GOOD THING I've got this catalog that shows me all of the things that I could have if circumstances aligned for me... and also, WHY AM I NOT LOVED?"

I can choose shame and death and "you will never, ever, ever, ever be able to fix this."

And a thousand others.

And I get to choose.

Q16: 4&7v

You know what's better for children than an iPad? 

A FREAKING SANDBOX. 

Because a sandbox can be a monster truck rally, and a noodle factory, and a field of crops (or "trops," whatever works for you), a mountain building contest... in other words, an interacting, creating, sharing, learning BONANZA that requires you to be outside.

So, 7 peed in the sandbox today. 

And I'm all, "7, go to your room. Your mom said before she left, NO WATER IN THE SANDBOX." 

7: "But it's not WATER, it's - "

"NO WATER OF ANY KIND. Room. Now."

So, after the seven minute punishment, I ask him, "7, why did you have to go to your room?"

7: "Because I peed in the sandbox."

Me: "Did you think it was funny?"

7: (smirks) "It was funny."

Me: (trying not to smirk) "Maybe. But that doesn't mean you were supposed to do it. What did your mom say before she left?"

7: "No water in the sandbox." 

Me: "And..."

7: "Fine, I won't do it again." (runs away)

Later, at the pool, after we're done swimming and they're headed for the men's locker room (yes, they go in there by themselves, I pick my freaking battles, ok, and 7 has told me that changing in the family changing room with a nanny is "illegal." He used the word ILLEGAL. I don't believe him, but he believes him, and I'm not dealing with it.)

Me: "Hey 7? Take care of your brother, ok?"

7: "I always take care of 4."

4: "And I always take tare of him!!!" 

Good stories have memorable scenes. And today felt like a better story. 

Q15: The Silver Bullet

So, I had big news. Real big news. I was going to be like,

"I GOT 99 PROBLEMS BUT A SQUEAKY LEFT TURN AIN'T ONE!!!!"

And I wanted to say that so bad I just went ahead and did it. But now I have to explain myself.

Today, my inherited (mom's side grandma) red PT Cruiser (dubbed "The Silver Bullet")  went in for repairs for the second day in a row.

It's been squeaking on left hand turns for about a year now, and I was ready for it to stop. Yesterday, the repair people said something about a special lug nut wrench that they didn't have and that we might have to dig through a junkyard to find.

But I knew my Granny wasn't the kind of person that would hide the magic lug nut. So, last night, I dug through the glove compartment, found it in an envelope (return addressed to somewhere in California), and told my parents that The Silver Bullet was headed back to Best West Tires.

I was stoked. I was really excited about the object lesson. "The fix it needed was inside it all along!"

This afternoon, I skipped up to the counter and said "thank you!" to the repair guy as he handed me my keys. Turns out, there was just a lot of dust in the brakes. We were home free with object lesson in tow. But as I drove it home, The Silver Bullet squeaked at me. I tried another left turn, hoping that I had heard another car. Nope. Now, the squeak is higher pitched. So, thanks for that, Best West Tires.

You live with your quirks. How well you live with your quirks is up to you.

I still get my object lesson.

Stupid, good-for-nothing magic lug nuts.